Vodafone has announced today that, after a competitive pitch process in search of potential agencies, it has selected DraftFCB as its preferred brand agency and AffinityID as its preferred specialist CRM agency.

It's been a fairly lengthy pitch process which NBR reported on in July, and saw DraftFCB drop Orcon in favour of pitching for Vodafone, with M&C Saatchi picking up the Orcon reins.

DraftFCB has reportedly beaten out Ogilvy's and incumbents .99 which had been handling the account, taking over from Colenso BBDO, which won Vodafone's last review in 2007.

The DraftFCB win follows the agency's win of Air NZ's lead advertising account this year.

The telecommunications company is thought to have recommended DraftFCB after the pitch was completed in December, which may explain the delay in its announcement this afternoon, StopPress reported.

Chief marketing officer Greg Campbell says the team at Vodafone were impressed by the quality of all the submissions.

Vodafone previously spent $19.6 million on advertising in 2010, along with a further $15.5 million from January to August in 2011 according to AIS data based on ratecard spend provided by Nielsen.

More to come.